Constance (Constance #1)(18)

Con left the building and crossed the street to a small park formed by the intersection of three streets. She needed to sit down and gather her thoughts. She’d thought coming home would begin to provide some answers, but she was only accumulating more questions. If she didn’t live here, where had she gone? Why had she stopped doing her monthly refreshes at Palingenesis? How had she died? Was it all connected?

First things first, though—what did she do now? Tonight? She felt exhausted. If she didn’t sleep soon, she was going to collapse. But where? She was literally penniless. Maybe she could sleep here in the park. It had always been a place of refuge for her. Just a single bench, a small triangle of grass beneath a copse of oaks, but in the spring, she would sit against a tree with her guitar and a notebook.

She loved that guitar, a vintage Martin D-28. It was her most prized possession. Zhi had bought it for her at a little guitar shop in Detroit to celebrate signing the deal with the label. One of the last production runs to use authentic Brazilian rosewood. It had been through the wars with its previous owner. She could tell by the way the edges of the fretboard were rolled and rounded. Two of the bridge pins were mismatched, the headstock looked as if it had been used as a doorstop, and the back was scratched all to hell. From years of resting against a big ol’ belt buckle, if she had to guess. But despite, or perhaps because of, the alchemy of time and wear, the guitar had a gorgeous tone, warm and familiar.

Zhi had been the principal songwriter in the band, but he’d always encouraged her to write. With him gone, writing had become her outlet and sole consolation. Not that she ever performed any of the new material. She’d never written anything as intimate or personal, and the thought of sharing it with an audience . . . well, she simply wasn’t ready. But she had an idea that the songs she’d been hoarding in her notebook might be an album. One day. When she finally got her act together.

Across the street, an SUV glided silently up to the curb outside her old building. The doors opened almost before it stopped, and in unison three men dressed all in black got out. They trotted up to the front door and disappeared inside. Con sat up straight. How had they opened the building’s door? They definitely didn’t live there.

The SUV idled at the curb. Waiting. Watching. She had no way of proving they were from Palingenesis, but who else could it be? If they’d arrived only a little sooner, she would have been trapped inside the building with no way out. Laleh had been right that they wouldn’t give up so easily.

The driver rolled down his window. His white face was gaunt and pockmarked, and in the glow of the dashboard, it looked like the surface of the moon. A thin chinstrap beard outlined his jaw. His head turned, scanning the small park, then swung back as if he’d caught a glimpse of something. He leaned forward, staring right at Con with the dull, lifeless eyes of a shark. She fought the urge to run, praying the shadows from the oaks would hide her, afraid even to breathe.

Two of the men emerged from the building. It broke the driver’s spell, and he looked away. Silently, Con slid off the bench and pressed herself into the dirt.

“Anything?” the driver said, his voice carrying across to her in the night air.

“She was here,” his man answered.

“When? How long ago?”

“Kid wasn’t sure. Not long.”

“How did she get on the train? How did she get here ahead of us?”

“She’s being careful.”

“Bullshit, she’s just some girl. Someone’s got to be helping her.” The driver spat out his window. “Garcia stays put in case she comes back. You two are with me.”

The two men grunted their assent and climbed back into the SUV. After a few minutes, it drove away. After a few more, Con slipped away into the night.





CHAPTER SEVEN


In the hours after the close call at her apartment building, Con stayed on the move, driven by a combination of adrenaline and fear. She felt stupid. Laleh had warned her that Palingenesis wouldn’t give up easily, but she hadn’t taken the warning seriously enough. Instead, she’d gone straight home, where, if she’d been a few minutes later, or those men had been a few minutes earlier . . . She let the thought trail off ominously. Bottom line? She’d gotten extremely lucky and couldn’t afford to be that careless again.

Worried that Palingenesis might be tracking her LFD, she shut it down. Probably they’d simply followed her home, but better safe than sorry. Eventually, exhaustion brought her literally to her knees as she stumbled over an enormous tree root that had shrugged aside the sidewalk pavers like tissue paper. She had to find somewhere to sleep and was long past being picky.

She made her bed in an alley behind an Ethiopian restaurant on a stack of flattened shipping boxes, her backpack serving as a makeshift pillow. The restaurant’s dumpster created a natural blind that blocked any view of her from the street. But it did have its drawbacks. The summer heat had turned the overflowing dumpster into a fetid Crock-Pot, and the simmering perfume of rotting food filled the alley. On the bright side, she figured the smell would discourage casual tourists. Someone would need to be highly motivated to come looking for her here.

A car horn jolted her awake. Without her LFD, she could only judge the time by the hazy sunlight slanting down the alleyway. It didn’t feel like she’d been asleep for that long, though. She lay on her side bathed in sweat, feeling nauseated and weak. Gamma Jol shuffled up in slippers and a housecoat. It was a bathrobe, but she had always called it her housecoat. As if that somehow made it alright to wear to the grocery store.